“DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

By Raymond Benson

“Don’t look at me!” shouts Frank Booth, the sociopath played by Dennis Hopper, but that, of course, is exactly what David Lynch wants you to do.

Lynch was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for this singular, extraordinary film that shook audiences around the world in 1986, and it’s the picture that solidified the filmmaker as perhaps the heir to the surrealists of the 1920s. It’s a polarizing film that makes audiences uncomfortable and sometimes outraged, and yet it possesses signature stylistic and thematic aspects to which Lynch has returned many times in such fare as the more mainstream (but also surreal) television series Twin Peaks, and the dreamlike fugues of pictures like Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.

After the box-office and critical failure of the sci-fi extravaganza, Dune (1984), Lynch exercised his option with producer Dino De Laurentiis to make a smaller, personal movie of his choice (with a drastically reduced budget). It is a work of striking brilliance and power, despite the negative reactions from some viewers (including Roger Ebert) to the violence against women depicted in the story. But this is what the movie is about, and it is handled with frank and often shocking, but artfully drawn, imagery in a film noir framework. Lynch’s recurring themes of lost innocence, exploring the dark underbelly of a seemingly all-American small town, voyeurism, good versus evil, and the “mysteries of love” are on full display.

Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) is a college student who has come home to visit his hospitalized father in his small town of Lumberton, North Carolina. While walking through a field, he finds a severed human ear. He dutifully brings it to the police station, and then becomes friendly with the detective’s daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). While on a date, Sandy tells him that she overheard her father discussing the case, and it involves a lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). Jeffrey takes it upon himself to play detective on his own and break into Dorothy’s apartment. Suddenly, Jeffrey’s safe little world is turned upside down and he is sucked into a cabal of sadistic criminals led by Frank Booth (Hopper, in a truly scary, nightmare-inducing performance). Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif, and Jack Nance are among the gang members, and each of them are as eccentric and creepy as their boss.

It’s a tale of a Boy Scout who discovers hard truths about the world we live in, and of a woman who sacrifices her soul for the safety of her husband and son. At its heart it is a profound statement on love and what we as humans are willing to do, not for it, but because of it. Blue Velvet is an uncompromising work of art that will stand the test of time, the quintessential David Lynch film, the one that can be buried in a time capsule to represent his entire oeuvre.

Besides the excellent cast, the gorgeously dark cinematography (by Frederick Elmes), and the bravura direction, Blue Velvet also marked the beginning of Lynch’s relationship with composer Angelo Badalamenti, whose music has become identified with the filmmaker’s titles. Alternating between the dreamy and beautiful to the menacing and dark, Badalamenti’s score perfectly captures Lynch’s mise-en-scène as the director takes us from the bright, sunny cheeriness of Lumberton’s surface to the ugly, nefarious underground that most likely exists in all towns across America.